Ancients => a couple of nude dudes, a horse and a dolphin (huh?)

I was not happy to receive an e-mail today from acsearch. They are joining the fee based archive search world. We can use their database for "scientific" information, but to get prices you must pay about $100 per year. If I read their web site right, Coin Archives is higher at $600 per year. The link from TIF's post gave a discounted price of $480 for the first year.

- Basic- and Premium-Accounts: since the launching of acsearch.info in 2009, the extent of the database (now close to 3 million) and the web-traffic (close to 300’000 hits per day) have increased steadily. To cover our growing amount of work and expenses, we have therefore decided to introduce a fee-based Premium-Account (annual subscription 85 EUR, two years 160 EUR, one week 15 EUR). The scientific access to the database starting from 1999 remains free: users with a Basic-Account have full access to descriptions and pictures. Users with a Premium-Account gain additional access to price informations and the following new features:

 

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Ugh. They've already made the change. All estimates and hammers require a premium membership.

Edited: If they continue scanning catalogs this will be worth the price. I went ahead and paid for a year since I use the site almost daily. Right now they have ~121 pre-1999 catalogs added (1901-1938, a handful of companies), with the coins listed individually in the same format as before.

 

Despite the price, CoinArchives is a vastly superior service. I (obviously!) use the professional edition, but the layout and search algorithm is just plain better than ACsearch. I only use ACsearch when I have to check something from vAuctions or ArtCoins Roma.

 

Bummer. I was hoping for a poor review of CoinArchives Pro since I really can't justify the price .

 

Cheap old me has no problem with this since I consider the prices a joke in many cases anyway BUT I will have to decide if I want a Premium Membership for the other new feature. They say they are digitizing pre 1999 auction catalogs and have already done the ones they have before 1930's. The are also asking for people to donate old catalogs for them to digitize. I have no idea if this is a destructive process or if they can return catalogs (postage being an issue since they are in Europe). Today, can not see paying 85 Euros a year but this would be a better use of the money than those people doing specimen searches for similar fees if they had a good set of illustrated sales from the previous century.

I really do not care about the realizations for every common aureus of the usual suspects and have access to enough of them via other resources to give a good idea. However, I would love to see any records of, for example, Alexandria tetradrachms of Julia Domna sold between 1900 and 1999 not to see the prices but to see the coins and find out if the ones I have have relatives out there. I know many of you are more interested in prices that I am but I remain hopeful that this new feature will grow into what I want (like all the NFA catalogs, early Malter price lists or a thousand others). It will be a long time until they will get a reasonable coverage of the old books but starting is better than saying it won't ever happen.

 

I forgot: I just noticed their home page linking comments on coins listed previously. Most comments point out fakes including some that the big name seller should be very ashamed to have missed. Is this new?
https://www.acsearch.info/
https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=2530236

 

The website layout is new. They didn't have a "newest comments" section before-- you had to just stumble upon comments when viewing the coin commented upon.

 

@stevex6 Gorgeous coin! The details are very 3-D. Well done on the capture...and yeah, I knew it cost a purdy penny. But, it really looks worth it... Nice!

 

At the level you're buying at, I think its about time you start thinking hard about it.

 

Ahahaha, thanks for resuscitating this sweet ol' thread, TIF (yup, that is my only coin that broke the $2000 ceiling => $1700 hammer!! ... fricken extras!!)






.... luckily, I still absolutely "Love that coin"

Man, I laugh everytime that I see that poor dolphin's expression ...

=> "Hey, quit putting your drink on my blow-hole, ya jerk!!"

 

Worth every penny steve.

 

Yep, comparatively speaking, it was a steal and am envious every time I see that gorgeous coin!

 

I am not going to pay a subscription to acsearch. I would rather spend the money on a coin. My budget is not large enough that I have to research past auctions. If I win the lottery however, different story!

 

Ditto!

 

Really beautiful coin and fabulous style, Steve!